Scholar of Renaissance and Baroque art in Austria
and Italy, Nazi collaborator during World War II. Frey studied (practicing)
architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna. In 1911, the
second-Vienna School art historian Max Dvořák (q.v.) took him as his assistant
in the Austrian monument conservation bureau. Dvořák encourage Frey to study art
history, and Frey wrote his dissertation in 1915 (under Dvořák) on Bramante’s
plan for St Peter’s. In addition to Dvořák, other Vienna-school leaders,
Julius von Schlosser (q.v.) and Schlosser's nemesis, Josef Strzygowski (q.v.)
also exerted tremendous influence on Frey. In 1929 he published his
controversial Gotik und Renaissance whose subtitle was "the
principles of a modern worldview." In it, he asserted that gothic art is
perceived over time (in a succession) whereas the renaissance is experienced
simultaneously. He was appointed professor of Art History at
Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1931. In 1938, Frey authored the article
"Die Entwicklung nationaler Stile in der mittelalterlichen Kunst," connecting
national characteristics with style. After the invasion of Poland by
Germany in 1939, Frey was one of three leading professors selected by the Nazi
high command to validate Poland as a "Teutonic land" deserving of German
invasion and to rewrite Polish history without Jewish involvement. Frey's 1941
book, Krakau, denied any Slavic influence in the art or culture. Likewise,
his 1942 guide to the city of Lublin, one of the oldest Jewish communities in
Poland, mentions Jews only once. Frey was interrogated by the OSS and
relieved of his position in 1945. He returned to Austria to work in
monuments preservation office in Vienna again. In 1951 he moved to Stuttgart
as professor of art history at the Technische Hochschule. His post-war research
involved earlier renaissance figures (Giotto) as well as Titian, Michelangelo
and Rembrandt. His son, Gerhard Frey (1915-) was also a professor and
edited his father's writings.

Methodologically, Frey demonstrates the influence of the
multiple Vienna-school scholars under whom he studied and worked. His allegiance
to documentary evidence is closest to Schlosser. His theoretical view of
space and time is akin to the theoretics of Dvořák. To the unorthodox Strzygowski,
Frey borrowed his interest in interdisciplinary methods, and unfortunately, a
predilection for assigning national/ethnic characteristics to art. In Gotik
and Renaissance, Frey suggests that the Renaissance introduced a closed
space (linear perspective) where figures are instantaneously comprehensible in
their enclosure. By contrast, Gothic painting and sculpture requires
"reading" to construct the scene by the view. This ingenious view of
two art epochs draws much from Lessing's view that the visual arts are static
and the arts of literature, temporal. Renaissance and baroque architecture
were the thrust of his research as well as local history books on Austria in
addition to his infamous Krakau and Lublin. His interest in
theories of art and methodologies makes his work of lasting value. Frey’s
writing on style and African and Eurasian cultures shows the influence of
Tübingen art historian Konrad Lange
(q.v.). Joseph
Frank's "Spatial Form in Modern Literature (1945) and W. J. T. Mitchell, (1980)
employs this theory directly. The work of the medievalist Miriam S. Bunim
(1912-1986) also draws upon Frey's theory. Frey’s intent was to combine
different disciplines into a philosophy of art which could make use of multiple
approaches. It remained uncompleted at the time of his death.